New Brunswick Military Heritage Series – serie

Few Canadians realize how close the colony of Nova Scotia came to joining the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Many Nova Scotians were immigrants from New England, including the Planters who, some twenty years earlier, had taken over the farms of the expelled Acadians. Between family ties and unrestrained privateering, there was much sympathy in Nova Scotia for the American Patriots.In Hope Restored, Robert Dallison tells the story of how the British raised two regiments and sent their members to the area that, as a result, became New Brunswick, thus overcoming the groundswell and fending off Patriot attacks. These soldiers had two jobs: to fight the Americans, and to settle the land as a bulwark against invasion. Spem reduxit (hope restored) became their motto and the motto of the province they founded.As well as telling the story of the Loyalist regiments, Hope Restored describes many Loyalist and Revolutionary War sites, some of which can be visited today. Among them are the Loyalist Encampment and Cemetery in Fredericton, Saint John's Fort Howe, and the MacDonald Farm Provincial Historic Park in Northumberland County.Hope Restored is the second book in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series published by Goose Lane Editions in collaboration with the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project. Written by historians and military personnel, the books in this series will explore subjects ranging from New Brunswick's pivotal role in the American Revolution to one veteran's account of caring for World War I cavalry horses. All of the volumes will be fully illustrated with modern and archival maps, photos, and works of art and are available at all bookstores in New Brunswick.

On the ghastly battlefields of the First World War, Jimmie Johnston drove teams or pack horses carrying ammunition and hauling guns to the front lines. One night, Johnston was hauling guns back from the front line. Suddenly, in the darkness and pouring rain, he, his team, the wagon, and the guns pitched into an old trench. After disentangling the horses from their harness, Johnston found a trenching tool, dug away the side of the trench, and led the horses out of what had become a sea of mud. Then he harnessed them again, took them back to camp, cleaned them up, and returned to the trench to find the wagon blown to bits by German fire.Jimmie Johnston, the farm boy, endured nearly three years under constant artillery fire. Two decades after the war ended, he wrote this memoir of his wartime experiences on a trip back to Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. In Riding into War, Johnston marvels at how jokes and pranks and the funny side of even the most terrible events have stuck in his mind. Yet, even in the face of horror and suffering, his sense of humour rarely deserted him. The scenes he relates destroyed many men's sanity, but Johnston's ability to laugh and the practical need to care for his horses no doubt contributed to his recovery. After the war, he says, "my nerves were not too good, and I remember a lot of nights I would get up when no one else was around and have to go for a long walk." But, he concludes, "After some time, this seemed to wear off and soon back to a new life again."Riding Into War is volume 4 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Since the last Ice Age, the only safe route into Canada's interior during the winter started at the Bay of Fundy and followed the main rivers north to the St. Lawrence River through what is now New Brunswick. Aboriginal people used this route as a major highway in all seasons and the great imperial powers followed their lead.The Grand Communications Route, as it was then called, was the only conduit for people, information and goods passing back and forth between the interior settlements and the wider world and became the backbone of empire for both England and France in their centuries of warfare over this territory. It was Joseph Robineau de Villebon, a commandant in Acadie, who first made strategic use of the route in time of war because he understood its importance in the struggle for North America. A strategic link between the Atlantic colonies and Quebec, the French made extensive use of the route to communicate and move troops between the northern settlements and Fort Beauséjour, Louisbourg, and Port-Royal. The British put great effort into maintaining and fortifying the route, building major coastal forts at Saint John to guard its entrance and erecting garrisons and blockhouses all along the way to the St Lawrence, first as a defence against the French and then to ward off the Americans.The route also played a key role in the American Revolution as well as the Aroostook War of 1839 that saw bodies of troops lining each side of the border extending from St. Andrews (NB) and Calais (ME) to Madawaska. In 1842, the Grand Communications Route and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty determined the location of the Canada—US border.It is still in use today: the Trans-Canada Highway and Route 7 follow its path. As well as telling the story of the Grand Communications Route from the earliest human habitation of the area, The Road to Canada describes the historic sites, forts, blockhouses and other historic remains that can still be visited today, including Martello Tower (Saint John), the Fort Hughes blockhouse (Oromocto), the Fort Fairfield blockhouse (Fort Fairfield, ME), Le Fortin du Petit-Sault (Edmundston), the Fort Kent blockhouse (Fort Kent, ME) and Fort Ingall (Cabano, QC).The Road to Canada is volume 5 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

The word "pirate" conjures up many Hollywood images, but Trimming Yankee Sails by Faye Kert paints a very different picture. Covering the Atlantic coast from Cape Breton Island, Halifax, and Saint John to the east coast of the United States down to the Virginias, this insightful book offers a glimpse of northeastern North America's naval history and the pirates and privateers who scourged the Atlantic coast throughout the 19th century.In Trimming Yankee Sails, Faye Kert recounts a thrilling but little known story. Pirates and privateers sailed from New Brunswick ports throughout the 19th century, but their exploits began in earnest during the War of 1812. Amid tales of battles at sea and fortunes lost and won, Kert's exposure of the murky context in which these semi-legal marauders operated reveals surprising truths about Confederation and its promoters.Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick is Volume 6 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Daniel MacMillan never saw the battlefields of Passchendaele or Vimy Ridge. A farmer in the tiny New Brunswick community of Williamsburg, he experienced the Great War entirely from the "home front." War on the Home Front: The Farm Diaries of Daniel MacMillan, 1914-1927 is a portrait of the other side of war from the perspective of a man who, like countless families across North America, had no choice but keep on going with his life as sons, nephews, brothers and fathers fought and died on battlefields worlds away.As MacMillan's moving wartime diaries reveal, these years took a terrible toll on him, his family, his farm, and his community. A fascinating chronicle of wartime life, Daniel MacMillan expressed the fear, anxiety and uncertainty as well as the sense of duty and fortitude that characterized the war experience on an individual level, making the tragic four-year event much clearer in diary form than in second-hand reports.His insider's account of supplying money, men, equipment, and especially food for the country and the troops documents the often unnoticed sacrifices of rural people in wartime and their post-war struggles to recover. The diary is also a testament to the loyalty of the people of Stanley parish, who mobilized the churches, women's groups and other institutions to provide aid to the troops overseas, the Red Cross and other war-related issues. A unique historical document, War on the Home Front encompasses entries written between 1914 and 1927 in which MacMillan describes the hardships of running a farm in the face of acute labour shortages and the anguish of losing friends and neighbours in battle.War on the Home Front is Volume 7 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

In the early 1860s, Irish immigrants in the United States were eager to help the Fenian brotherhood overthrow the British in Ireland. The American Fenians' mission: to invade British North America and hold it hostage. New Brunswick, with its large Irish population and undefended frontier, was a perfect target. The book tells how, in the spring of 1866, a thousand Fenians massed along the St. Croix River and spread terror among New Brunswickers. When the lieutenant-governor called in British soldiers and a squadron of warships, the Fenians saw that New Brunswick was no longer an easy target, and they turned their efforts against central Canada. The Fenian "attacks" and the demand for home defence fanned the already red-hot political debate, and a year later, in July 1867, New Brunswick joined Confederation.Turning Back the Fenians is volume 8 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Harry L. Gill, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 at the age of 18. During his short but adventure-filled career, he flew a Hurricane fighter bomber over France, England, and India and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. In 1943 his airplane was shot down over Burma, and he died in the crash.Hurricane Pilot captures the perspective of a young man in the middle of a war in Europe and Asia. Drawing extensively on Gill's correspondence with his parents and his siblings, this very personal account of war shows how Gill was transformed from a small-town boy to a mature fighter pilot serving in a global war on another continent. His letters depict the enthusiasm of youth, a strong sense of humour, his plans for the future, and this continuing attachment to home.Hurricane Pilot is volume 10 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

In 1917, the Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge in northern France, and a myth grew that Canada — as a nation — was born on its slopes. But the cost was tremendous: 10,000 Canadians were killed, wounded, or went missing in the three-day battle. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Robert Borden assembled a "Union Government" to support conscription and called an election on the issue. Canada split along ethnic lines: English Canadians supported conscription; French Canadians rejected it. By year end, Canada teetered on the brink of civil war.As Andrew Theobald reveals, New Brunswickers were not spared the bitter divisiveness of the larger national debate. Determined to win the election, federal politicians fanned the flames of ethnic tension, pitting English against French and Irish Catholics against Protestants. In the end, the Conscription Crisis of 1917 fractured the ethnic harmony of New Brunswick, leaving a lasting and tragic legacy.The Bitter Harvest of War is Volume 11 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Imagine you're a young woman caught up in the ugly reality of war. You meet and fall in love with a young soldier from a foreign country. You marry and your world is upended: when the war ends, you leave all you've ever known behind — your family, friends, and way of life — to begin a new life in Canada.This is the story of hundreds of women who made their way to New Brunswick at the end of the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1948, young women from all over Europe came to this part of Canada with their servicemen husbands. Some married Aboriginal New Brunswickers; others married French-speaking Acadians; still others married New Brunswickers of British descent. In this compelling volume, wives, widows, fiancées, and those who and returned to Europe after failed marriages tell compelling stories of prejudice, perseverance, kindness, hope, defeat and triumph.Captured Hearts is volume 12 in the New Brunswick Military History Series.

In 1942, RAF flight controller Robert Wyse became a Japanese prisoner of war on the island of Java in Indonesia. Starved, sick, beaten, and worked to near-death, he wasted away until he weighed only seventy pounds, his life hanging in tenuous balance. There were strict orders against POWs keeping diaries, but Wyse penned his observations on the scarce bits of paper he could find, struggling to describe the brutalities he witnessed. After cleverly hiding his notes in a piece of bamboo next to his bed, in December of 1943, he carefully hid his notes inside a bottle beneath his prison hut. After the war, he wrote to the Dutch authorities, asking them to dig up his diary and return it to him.In this detailed and frank portrayal of life under Japanese occupation, Wyse reveals the both the best and the worst of human nature. He criticized his fellow soldiers for botching the defence of Java and Sumatra and admonished his captors for their brutality. Yet, Wyse also describes the selfless efforts of the Dutch civilians who helped the prisoners by doing whatever they could as well as his first-hand observations of acts of self-sacrifice among the prisoners themselves.Bamboo Cage is volume 13 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

At 31 years old, Major Cyrus Inches resolved to survive the Great War, and did so without losing his sense of humour, in spite of the tragedies he constantly faced. His letters home were stored and left undisturbed for almost ninety years. Cleverly written with wit and humour, they reveal voluminous details of life during the war. Cyrus Inches also kept a diary and published a booklet called The 1st Canadian Heavy Battery in France — Farewell Message to NCOs and Men, which chronicled the movements and the battles of his battery. The booklet and letters combine to create a complete history of one Canadian officer's experiences — from Valcartier and the First Battle of Ypres to Mons, and the months of demobilization after that.Uncle Cy's War is volume 14 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

From the seafaring battles between the British and the French of the 1640s to the privateers of the War of 1812, from the merchant ships of the Second World War to the construction of the corvettes and frigates in the 20th century, New Brunswick has played an important role in Canada's naval history. In 1881, the new Dominion of Canada chose New Brunswick as the base for its naval operations. Three decades later, New Brunswick MP Sir George Foster initiated Parliamentary debates that led to the founding of the modern Canadian Navy.In this fact-filled volume, Marc Milner and Glenn Leonard tell the story of New Brunswick's contribution to Canada's storied naval heritage.New Brunswick and the Navy is volume 16 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

As the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 approaches, a new chapter in the history of the war is being opened for the first time. Although naval battles raged on the Great Lakes, combat between privateers and small government vessels boiled in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine. Three small warships — the Provincial sloop Brunswicker, His Majesty's schooner Bream, and His Majesty's brig of war Boxer — played a vital role in defending the eastern waters of British North America in this crucial war.The crews of these hardy ships fought both the Americans and the elements — winter winds, summer fog, and the fierce tidal currents of the Bay of Fundy — enduring the all-too-real threats of shipwreck and possible capture and imprisonment. In peacetime, these patrol craft enforced maritime law. In wartime, they engaged in a guerre de course, attacking the enemy's commercial shipping while protecting their own. Now, for the first time, Joshua Smith tells the full story of the battle for the bay.Battle for the Bay is volume 17 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

When most people think of the War of 1812, they think of the Niagara frontier, the British burning of the White House, the harrowing tale of Laura Secord, and the much-ballyhooed Battle of New Orleans. But there was more of British North America involved in the war than Upper and Lower Canada. With Great Britain locked in battle with Napoleon's France, the United States pounced on the chance to declare war on Britain. In New Brunswick, the threat of invasion was a very real possibility. Fearing for their lives, families, and property, the people and their legislative assembly adopted every possible measure to make New Brunswick ready for war. However, an officially undeclared state of neutrality was established along the Maine border, and the threat faded. Supporting the British army in its efforts in Upper and Lower Canada and the navy in its operations along the Atlantic coast led to major growth in the province's war economy.As the war moved into its final year and Napoleon's empire fell in Europe, Britain became much more aggressive in its North American campaign. Buoyed by this, the New Brunswick government decided to press its claims to the unresolved international border with Maine. The British military thus occupied the Penobscot River Valley, and northern Maine was declared part of New Brunswick. By the end of the war, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, the unresolved border remained unresolved.The economic, political, geographical, and societal results of the War of 1812 continue to be felt in New Brunswick. The war strengthened the colony's ties to Britain, built up its economy, and led to the growth of major cities, especially with the settlement of retiring soldiers. Shipbuilding and supplying the British troops had led to growing profits for farmers, fishermen, merchants, and labourers. Although it would be decades later before the boundary issue was officially settled, there were areas still in dispute. Unlike its Upper and Lower Canadian cousins, the war in New Brunswick may not have involved the burning and pillaging of towns and villages, but its effects were nonetheless important and far-reaching.A Neighbourly War is volume 19 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

A little-known episode in North America's history, the 1839 Aroostook War was an undeclared war with no actual fighting. It had its roots in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War but left the border of Maine (then part of Massachusetts) and British North America unsettled, and in the War of 1812, when parts of northern Maine were occupied by Britain. Fearing a negotiated border would negatively affect their claim for the disputed territory, Maine occupied the Aroostook River valley in early 1839, British regulars, New Brunswick militia, and Maine militia were then deployed in the dead of winter, as the kindling was laid for a third major Anglo-American conflagration. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, although they did not deter a number of skirmishes between the Maine Land Agent posses and a loosely organized group of New Brunswick lumbermen.A complex story of friction, greed, land grabs, and rivalry, this border dispute which nearly resulted in war was eventually settled by the Ashburton-Webster Treaty of 1842 and told by Campbell in The Aroostook War of 1839.The Aroostook War of 1839 is volume 20 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.